Honoo no Mirage

Chapter 1: The Chance Meeting of Swirling Flames

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Chapter 1: The Chance Meeting of Swirling Flames

In the pre-dawn hours of the Sixth, the shrine of the daimyo Takeda Shingen in Iwakubo, Koufu in the prefecture of Yamanashi was found to be destroyed by persons unknown. Yamanashi police, determining it to be a malicious prank, sought the cooperation of area residents in tracking down the perpetrators.

BAM!

The youth in school uniform who had just been thrown by the punch crashed into cases of beer piled against the edge of a wall and tumbled with a loud clamor along with the beer to the ground.

Clang clang CLANG!

“...!...”

Yuzuru exhaled, and a shudder ran through his shoulders.

He returned to himself, still standing in the pose of someone who had just thrown a straight right punch.

(Eh?)

For a moment he could not quite place where he was.

(Huh?)

He stared at his clenched fist.

(What...?)

Looking around, he saw only four high school students dressed in navy-blue uniforms. They were lying limply here and there as if someone had knocked them to the ground.

Yuzuru blinked a few times.

“Er...huh? ”

The youths regarded Yuzuru with identical fearful gazes. Their faces had splotches of bruises as if someone had given them a beating, and their expressions were of elementary school children who had been bullied. They crawled together and began throwing jeers at Yuzuru with false bravado.

“Do-don’t think you can get c.o.c.ky, a.s.shole!”

“W-w-w-we’ll remember this!”

Having forced out their threats, they were off and running down the alley even before the echoes of their voices had faded.

“Whaaa...?”

Yuzuru stared after them, flabbergasted.

A bunch he didn’t recognize. But from their uniforms, he guessed, (Students from West High? Why? )

Yuzuru looked down at himself. His uniform was in disarray and full of dust, and his necktie had come undone.

He suddenly noticed that the corner of his mouth stung sharply. His hand felt as if he had hit something, and there was a smudge of blood on his fingers.

“Oh...”

Bewildered and stunned, he began to shake.

He hadn’t recognized the West High students who had run down the alleyway. His fist throbbed with the dull pain that remained after punching someone.

After...?

No, he really must have punched someone. Then he and those high school students had been...?

(What have I been doing...? )

Yuzuru covered his mouth with his hand. He tried to think back. But he had no memories to follow. He couldn’t remember—everything was a complete blank.

What had he been doing?

Yuzuru’s expression stiffened a little. He tried to rewind his memories and play them back. Where did they stop? Where did they disappear? He couldn’t remember. What was he—what had he been doing? What was he doing?

Where was this?

“!”

Feeling another’s presence, Yuzuru startled badly and spun around. There.

Standing there was a tall male student dressed in the same tea blazer uniform as Yuzuru. He didn’t know how long he had been there. Leaning against the white brick walls of the storehouse, he was looking over at Yuzuru. Then, with a cool, faint smile, he said, “Not bad.”

“...”

Yuzuru stared blankly, eyes round as acorns. This time it was a face he recognized.

“...Takaya...” he called the name without thought.

A cloudless blue sky stretches out above the city as far as the eye can see. The Northern j.a.panese Alps, its graceful skyward peaks glittering with the last of the winter snows, look down over the town.

A May quickened by the refreshing Kamikouchi winds.

Matsumoto City in the prefecture of Nagano.

Shinshuu’s Matsumoto: a city surrounded by beautiful blue peaks, famous for being the entranceway to mountain-climbing in the j.a.panese Alps, called the ‘mountain capital’; a city grown up from its history as a simple castle town.

Within the city there are many historical landmarks such as Matsumoto Castle, one of j.a.pan’s national treasures, and the former Kaichi School. The city can be called the cultural center of Shinshuu—and now Nagano. It is now second in industry and commerce and population in the prefecture, and its residential areas had spread into the suburbs.

And so.

They are Narita Yuzuru and Ougi Takaya, second-year students here in Matsumoto at the prefecture school Jouhoku High.

“Fish fillet and large fries. Oh, and a medium c.o.ke.”

The employee at the counter, who would ordinarily not have seen high school students loitering around at this time of day, clicked away as she listened to the order. Takaya turned to look behind him.

It was a fast-food restaurant in front of Matsumoto Station. They had somehow ended up coming back to the station, and, needing somewhere to calm down, had walked into one of their regular haunts.

Yuzuru, whom he had brought with him, leaned lethargically against a wall beneath a poster, his eyes shadowed.

“...”

Elbows resting casually on the counter as he took in the scene, Takaya turned back to face the restaurant employee.

“Add another c.o.ke.”

The restaurant was emptier than they’d thought. —but then again, it was still before noon. The clock read just after eleven o’clock. Takaya carried the tray up to the second floor and dropped into a seat at a window facing the station terminal. He frowned up at Yuzuru, who had taken his seat after Takaya.

“What? Did you want the tacos instead?”

Yuzuru rested his chin in his hands and replied while gazing out the window, “I had tacos yesterday.”

“Yesterday?”

Takaya leaned forward unintentionally.

“‘Yesterday’—I knew it! You were skipping school!”

“What’s with the ‘I knew it’? And besides, what are you doing here at this time of day?”

Takaya’s lips tightened peevishly.

“I had self-study in Math, so I skipped out and came looking for you.”

“Self-study? Why?”

“How would I know? Guess he was feeling sorry for himself or something and didn’t show up.”

“Didn’t show up...? Oh, you’ve been fighting with the teacher again, haven’t you! You shouldn’t, you know! Math—that’s the new teacher, Yoshikawa, right? Poor guy, getting bullied right from the start!”

“I’m not bullying him! He was the one shooting off his mouth.”

“You’re pretty scary when that hot-headedness of yours cools down.”

“None of your business.” Seriously annoyed, Takaya turned away and chewed at his straw. “More important is what’s up with you.”

“?”

“Why the heck are you skipping?”

“...”

Yuzuru’s expression became slightly shadowed. Takaya waited patiently for him to speak, pushing the paper cup he had set down on the table to one side.

“Have you been stumbling around like this since two days ago?”

Yuzuru didn’t answer.

“Geez...” Takaya sighed. “I called your house, and your mom said that you ‘left for school like always’. I wonder what you’re doing so I go looking for you, and I find you in a place like that, standing over four guys like you just beat them up. You’re acting strange.”

“Strange?” Yuzuru leaned forward a little. “I’m strange?”

“...”

Takaya cast a serene gaze on Yuzuru, then leaned his chin in his hands and looked out the window. “Well, you were always weirder than other people.”

“—”

Yuzuru’s lips quirked slightly in a half-hearted reaction. It had been obvious from earlier that he had not been in good spirits and had few words to say.

“We haven’t changed cla.s.ses yet, so it can’t be start-of-cla.s.ses blues. I guess that’s the first time I’ve seen you fighting.... it’s not like you. Something like that...” It didn’t seem like the mild Yuzuru who usually stepped in to stop fights. “If there’s something bothering you, why don’t you try telling me? Even if I can’t give you sage advice, I’ll listen if it’ll help clear your head a bit.”

“Takaya—”

“So why have you been skipping?”

“I haven’t really been ‘skipping’.”

“?” Takaya asked, “Whadaya mean? Then...”

“I don’t know what’s going on either,” Yuzuru said, covering his forehead with the back of his hand. "Like today—I was heading for school when I left the house, and something strange happened again—the next thing I knew, I’d beaten up these guys I’ve never met before and had bruises like I’d been in a fight.

“Yuzuru?”

“It was like that yesterday, too. Everything was normal when I left the house, and the next thing I knew I was sitting in the middle of the street. And then the day before that...”

“And you don’t remember anything in between?”

“...”

Yuzuru nodded.

Takaya couldn’t help but draw in a breath.

“Then you...”

“I don’t know what’s going on at all. What’s wrong with me? Have I really, seriously gone mad? I can’t remember anything. That time I was really headed for school. What was I doing?”

“—”

“But that brawl earlier, I somehow don’t think that it was me fighting. I don’t remember anything, and it seems like it was someone else who did it.”

“...maybe.”

“?”

“I don’t think you’d provoke a fight with someone.”

“Takaya.” Yuzuru questioned him, clinging eagerly to his words, “What could it be? I don’t know much about it, but could it be something like a split personality?”

“Split personality? Why would you suddenly become like that?”

“You’re asking me why...”

Yuzuru, faced with Takaya’s scowl head-on, closed his mouth. Even so, the look in Takaya’s eyes was intimidating. Leaning forward deliberately, he began to question Yuzuru with the relentless intensity of a detective in an interrogation chamber.

“Was there anything that might have triggered it?”

Yuzuru, his index finger on his chin, turned his gaze slightly to the view outside the window.

“‘Triggered’...?”

“...was there?”

“Ye...ah.”

Pedestrians pa.s.sed beneath the window, a steady stream from the terminal’s generous traffic. While gazing at this scene, Yuzuru made a “ku” sound, and his eyebrows drew together.

“A dream...”

“Huh?”

To Takaya’s murmured reaction, Yuzuru responded as if speaking to himself, “I have this strange dream. When I woke up that day—that’s when it started. And then things started happening like today.”

“A dream? Do you remember it?”

“Yeah. Very clearly.”

“What?”

Don’t laugh."

“Why? Was it a funny dream?”

“You’re always taking every opportunity to make fun of other people when they’re being serious!”

“I’m not making fun of you! I’m not, so why don’t you tell me what kind of a dream it was?”

“A dream where I’m engulfed in flames.”

Takaya’s eyes fixed on Yuzuru’s face. “What?”

Yuzuru sneaked a look at Takaya’s reaction, and the melancholy expression returned to his face. He replied, “It was like the aftermath of a battle in a historical drama.”

“The aftermath of a battle?”

“Yeah. The sky overhead is reddish-purple. A desolate-looking plain stretches out all around me, and there are the bodies of many fallen warriors and soldiers...I don’t know what’s happening, but I walk there alone. Torn flags, broken spears and the like litter the ground. The moans I hear are like a rumble in the ground. I try to run away from that strange place, but the dead soldiers swarm up and seize my leg.”

Remembering the terror from that time, Yuzuru unconsciously wrapped both arms around himself.

“‘Don’t go’. ‘You can’t leave’. And then suddenly—” Yuzuru closed his eyes, expression strained. “Suddenly my body is engulfed in flames.”

A french fry dangled forgotten from Takaya’s lips.

Yuzuru’s voice was like a moan as he continued.

“It’s a pale purple flame, so hot that I really thought I would die. So hot that it didn’t seem like a dream, and I would burn to death! That’s what I’m thinking, when I wake up.” Yuzuru sighed deeply. “It seemed frighteningly real.”

“...”

Takaya, staring at Yuzuru, slowly chewed the french fry in his mouth.

From the stairs the chatter of children floated up. Takaya turned a cold gaze towards the noise. It sounded like a mother with her purchases taking along a group of children, all clamoring exuberantly. Undeterred by the vast amounts of free s.p.a.ce elsewhere in the room, she sat down with her children in the seat directly behind Takaya.

Takaya rolled his eyes at them disgustedly, but Yuzuru showed no reaction at all. He only stared down at the table, his face haggard and pale.

“...”

His gaze returning to Yuzuru, Takaya shut his mouth. Behind the table with the two silent people the children ran around noisily.

Clonk.

Unable to bear it any longer, Takaya stood up.

“Takaya?”

“Let’s go, Yuzuru.”

“Huh? Oh, wait. Takaya!”

Confused, Yuzuru chased after Takaya.

“You know...Yuzuru. ”

Walking along the bank of the Metoba River which flowed through the center of the street, Takaya spoke to Yuzuru walking at his side.

Yuzuru, chewing a leftover piece of fish fillet, lifted his eyes.

“What?”

“Um, well, rather than having a split personality, doesn’t it seem more like you’ve been possessed?”

“Possessed? Me?”

“I mean, it’s not anything like neurosis or the back-to-school syndrome, right? There’s got to be some explanation for why you’re having a hard time?”

“Maybe,” and his gaze fell to the asphalt. “But...”

“I guess I can’t laugh at you or call you an idiot, huh?” Takaya muttered, turning his gaze to the river’s brooklet. The refreshing May breeze brushed against the cheeks of the two uniform-clad figures gently. Through the intermittent sounds of cars pa.s.sing each other, the murmur of the brooklet reached their ears.

Takaya said, “Weren’t you paralyzed in cla.s.s the other day? It was probably the spirit of the girl who committed suicide ten years ago, right? Before that there was the ghost of the grandma who died in a traffic accident that followed you around, right? And when you take pictures on vacation you’d always catch a spirit or two. You’re seriously—you know, what’s it called. I’m not touched by psychic phenomenon at all, but a sensitive like you—wouldn’t you be a prime target?”

Finishing the last mouthful of his drink, Yuzuru’s brows knit. “What do you mean by ‘target’?”

“I dunno, but haven’t you been possessed by a spirit? Something like an itako or a medium?”

“Don’t put me together with them.”

“What you said about that strange dream you had, what was it? Like a historical drama? An onryou from the Sengoku Period, maybe?”

“No way...” Yuzuru said, laughing, but...

Suddenly.

He stopped in his tracks.

“?”

Noticing, Takaya halted too. Yuzuru was staring at a point somewhere ahead of them.

“Yuzuru?”

“Takaya. Over there.”

Takaya followed the direction of Yuzuru’s gaze. On the small red-painted bridge across the Metoba River.

There stood a young woman in school uniform gazing down at the river surface.

Long straight black hair flowed down her back. She seemed not too far from Takaya and Yuzuru’s age. Her sailor uniform was a brilliant navy blue with a cobalt blue ribbon—a uniform they had not seen around here before. But it was mid-morning—not a time for ordinary high school students to be loitering about.

The young woman held nothing in her hands; she only stared down at the river with an impression of perfect stillness. Her expression was without animation, her eyes blank, her face pale.

Something was strange.

Yuzuru gazed at the young woman fixedly as if something had drawn him to her. When Takaya noticed and, thinking it dubious, was on the verge of calling out...

Yuzuru stepped forward as if his feet had been bespelled.

Eyes wide, lips opened slightly, he took another unconscious step forward. It was as if someone was moving his legs like a puppet. Without its a.s.sistance he seemed to stagger. Then, another step—

“!...Yuzuru!”

“Huh?”

He came back to himself. Takaya grabbed his wrist. He shouted close to his ear, “You idiot! What’re you doing? !”

“Takaya.”

“Going after some chick—that’s not like you!”

“...” Yuzuru made a slight sound and closed his eyes. Then. A startled noise came from the young woman on the bridge, and she looked their way.

Noticing, the two turned their eyes back to her.

There were about fifteen meters between them.

Looking over at them, the young woman’s eyes filled with tension. Their blankness was replaced by glowing, and expression suddenly flooded back into her face. She stared at them where they stood on the pavement. But that gaze was not an ordinary casual look.

It was an eerie look not from this world.

(...what the...!)

A feeling of bizarre tension.

An intense disorientation as of having entered another dimension.

And then.

White light radiated from behind her.

He gulped, suddenly lost for breath.

(What in the world is—)

A squeak.

Yuzuru took an unconscious step back.

The young woman stared at them.

Like a n.o.ble of ancient times looking down upon a commoner, her expression was full of a strange feeling of coercion which pinned them motionless beneath her gaze.

Suddenly there was a trembling in the depths of her eyes.

“?”

Takaya was the one who reacted.

Her expression became layered with complexity as the sense of coercion disappeared. In its place a feeling of peace spread across her face, and her eyes opened wide. A faint murmur escaped from her shapely red lips.

“...thou...”

“Huh?” Takaya’s eyes widened.

The young woman moved towards them slowly. Her lips moved once more, saying something he couldn’t hear.

In that moment.

“!”

The young woman’s body trembled. “Oh!” Takaya and Yuzuru moved towards her; in that instant—!

Whoosh!

“What the!”

Pale fire burst from her body.

With an ear-piercing scream, the young woman’s body ignited.

“Wh...! The h.e.l.l!”

The young woman writhed, enveloped in flame. Her body burned with a sound like a gigantic gas burner. Screams ripped from her throat. The pale flames—no, purple. —purple!

“You’ve gotta be kidding me. Hey, Yuzuru! YUZURU!”

Yuzuru, his face convulsing with tremors, didn’t react to Takaya’s shout.

“Hey! You!”

Taking off his blazer, Takaya rushed over to the young woman. Within the flames the young woman writhed violently. Takaya, beating wildly at the fire in a attempt to put it out, suddenly stopped.

It wasn’t hot...

The fire gave off no heat.

(What? ...an illusion? )

Purple flames. Intense, eerie flames...from nowhere.

“Dammit!”

Biting his tongue, he wrapped his blazer around the young woman’s body and restrained her as she flailed violently. “Yuzuru!” he shouted. “An ambulance! Snap out of it and call an ambulance!”

Yuzuru didn’t move.

“Yuzuru! Can’t you hear me? YUZURU!”

Pa.s.sersby gathered to see what was going on. Takaya shouted, “YUZURU!...d.a.m.n it! YUZURU!”

«The seal on the Maenduka has been broken. Let us a.s.semble. Let us return to the land of our birth, o my brothers. »

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